A global consumer products company has sued Grand Rapids-based Ranir LLC, alleging the company willfully violated an earlier out-of-court settlement related to its sale of teeth whitening strips.

The case stems from an agreement that Cincinnati, Ohio-based Procter & Gamble Co. reached with Brushpoint Innovations Inc. of Toronto, which Ranir acquired in October 2016, to stop selling a competing tooth-whitening strip to retailers.

In 2014, Brushpoint agreed with stop selling the whitening strips to settle a 2012 lawsuit by P&G claiming patent infringement.

P&G, one of the world’s largest makers of consumer health care products, now claims that Ranir began producing and selling whitening strips at Wal-mart, Kroger and possibly other retailers across the U.S. The strips are “essentially the same” as P&G’s Crest Whitestrips product that was the subject of the 2012 case, according to a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

P&G alleges Ranir, which produces store-brand oral care products, began selling the strips months before the June 6, 2017, expiration of the 2014 agreement with Brushpoint.

“Ranir has acted deliberately and in bad faith, intentionally reneging on its prior agreements with P&G including the contractual obligations it assumed when it acquired Brushpoint,” the company said in court filings.

Ranir did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this report.

Claiming lost sales and a loss of market share, P&G asks the court for temporary and permanent injunctions against Ranir, damages “adequate to compensate P&G for Ranir’s infringement,” and triple punitive damages for its “willful infringement” of patents.

In several lawsuits since 2012, P&G successfully has defended its patents on the Crest Whitestrips. Ranir even agreed in 2012 to voluntarily halt the production and sale of its tooth-whitening product after P&G raised infringements concerns, according to this week’s lawsuit.

Ranir even told P&G about “other private label manufacturers who were also infringing P&G’s patents,” according to the lawsuit.

“On several occasions, Ranir acted as a self-appointed whistleblower and reported other manufacturers that it had determined were infringing P&G’s patents,” according to the court filing.